Real love -- I'm, like, searchin' for that Queer Love -- LGBTQIA+ Love // A Thread for the Real Ones

it's got like a sanded matte finish instead of a high-gloss sheen, I really love it

it's actually my friend's performance/idea and I'm just one of the performers, but it's like, about covid??? (which I'm not thrilled abt but I love my friend and am happy to contrib), it's like a sound collage based on "Aerial" (which I tbh am thrilled abt) and there's like, dancers in the audience, and mirrory things on the stage reflecting back on the audience, and there's like, contemplation and one-ness and survival and stuff I think

that's sooo cool and I'm jelly. I just listened to Aerial the other day. my introduction to ILX!

so I have had my own idea for YEARS that I have told several ppl abt and have gotten a good response to and I think I am going to finally finally try to pull it off next year, I think I have maybe even talked abt it on here somewhere, but the song is this v inexplicable house remix of "Rubberband Girl" and the performance is a complete ripoff of UNZIPPED (1995) where it will be a fashion show and there will be all sorts of zany chaos and hijinks backstage but w like perfect immaculate runway walks the second they come out from behind the curtain, the performance has nothing to do w the music but maybe I'll get some LIVESTRONG bracelets made and throw them into the crowd idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KII-OXV86c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFBc4rXKkTU

AERIAL is honestly the best Kate Bush album

also it is a bit $$$ (20 of them to be exact) but they are selling tickets for the livestream tomorrow night at 8:30! https://wl.seetickets.us/event/Night-of1000Kates/470113?afflky=UndergroundArts

stevie i still have that KB shirt you sent me! it's a lil snug on me atm but whenever i wear it ppl always ask about it

omg mine too is a lil snug, I forget which one I sent you but the one I have has her face on it and my belly makes it fold in half so that it makes her look like that one picture of Aphex Twin

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Aphex_Twin_-_Syro_main_press_photo.jpg

you sent me the glow in the dark one (which amazingly still works after probably dozens of laundry cycles)

I just watched unzipped recently and it was so good. also did you know there's a sister documentary called catwalk that basically follows Christy Turlington all over the world?
pretty awful what's going on with Linda Evangelista. she just released the first body pics of her condition due to coolsculpting. unimaginable.

I was sad to miss Kates. Heard my friend Anna blew it outta the park, and saw the wacky inflatable Cathy and Heathcliff blow-up piece on film. Looked like a really fun time, but we had planned a dinner months ago with our gay friends, one of whom is going through a health scare...so it seemed more important to hang out with them.

I finished "Detransition, Baby," yesterday, and while I thought it ended much too quickly, I thought it had some really lovely moments.

hope your friend is hanging in there <3

xp y0ung?? she fuckin KILLED it (as per usual). I hope they post a recording of the livestream.

I've been listening to a lot of RuTH lately 🌄🌄🌄

yes Stevie, that Ann4

o boy what a life we lead really

so I'm not sure when the next time I'll "meet" someone is, let's call it, due to extenuating circumstances

do i care?

will i ever go out to a bar and pick someone up again? i had occasional game. all of a sudden I'd love to meet someone younger than me. i usually don't gravitate to that realm. i wonder what that's about

you will absolutely go out to a bar and pick someone up again, it is so inevitable

Date tonight. At a (rooftop) bar. I shoulda asked if he's jabbed.

first date? how did you meet? brown hair, big heart, bat eyelashes?

you know Stevie it's just at first it was pandemia, and then health stuff that's going to take another 6 months to settle. just didn't realize I'd be singing the same tune for the goddamn 3-year dark ages. but whatever i'm going to get so many beauty treatments when this is all through I plan on looking like Princess Jasmine meets Bella Hadid. mark my words.

also i quit smoking forever and it's truly something else. going on 6 months.

my new issue of BUTT just arrived!!!!!!!!!

omg i already read some of the poems
how is it at large?

is it large?

C'mon Simone, let's talk about your big "but."

I haven't read it yet bcz I got it at work and then *brag alert* went straight to my fuck buddy's house for a cute date and only just got home a few hours ago!!!

butts all around

butts rule everything around me

OK SO
I'm not a butt man and i keep feeling more and more alone
like American men are just obsessed with them
i feel like there's something wrong with me

Stevo you're killin it these days

don't care about the outside, it's what's inside that counts imo

like the way it feels?

yeah! i mean not to get too tmi or too cliche i guess but i just think anuses are this incredible part of us lol and i really like experiencing them.

So! My Saturday night date sold me out. I suspected trouble when I had to text him 15 mins before meeting: he was running late thanks to a "minor emergency" at his parents', whatever that means (what's a "minor" emergency?). Luckily a friend kept me company at the bar.

An hour later, date texts: "On my way, send location address plz?" That's the last I heard of him. For a while I thought he died -- until I saw a an Instagram post Sunday morning.

He's 24, a former student who emailed me four years after class to ask about getting a beer or coffee. On determining he was queer he gushed: he praised my self-assurance, brains, looks, etc. We might've met that night had I not plans already. It's worth noting I barely remember this kid in summer 2018.

I wonder if simply not showing up is a phenomenon of the young?

Anusii are a cliche?

that sucks. definitely hit next. it's been a phenomenon of the young and old as long as i've been dating tbh. xp

Yeah, I wanted to avoid generational generalization, but a few viejos noted The Vanishing has been more prevalent in the last four years.

I've ghosted more than my share, I should note.

I have never done this, to my knowledge?

me eiths it's dumb
I'm too polite though

wassup homieslice

good morning!

Mornin' sunshine!
What's on the platter?

I'm vegetarian tonight.

sexually or culinarily?

Lady Bracknell : Well, both, if necessary, I presume!

So, I’m in one of the only two gay bars in Marbella (southern coast of Spain) right now, and the thing here is that high heeled shoes are passed around, everyone tries them on, and then they take their turn swishing down what passes for a catwalk. Pleased to report that my boy got the loudest applause of the night. We make our own entertainment.

The bar is filling up because at 4am they close the doors, bring out the ashtrays, and everyone can smoke indoors.

We will be back tomorrow for drag queen bingo.

omgggggg jealous

Oh I forgot to mention the seventy something naked woman who did her catwalk turn clutching a large stuffed teddy bear.

stop

jealz to the max

Just ended a fabulous evening with j0rdan.

hiiiiiii happy weekend fuck

otm
I am going to work in a few tho :(

TO BE HONEST IM STILL WORKING ON YOU KNOW WHAT SONG

i've realized i'm literally never going to tell anyone a project is finished until i've road tested it at least a dozen times with weeks apart in the last 2-3 times (you know shit ALWAYS sounds different with time)

which is ALSO WHY i haven't had a chance to play with ANY OTHER MUSIC so expect an update from me on that, i have NOT forgotten about your work (but of course understand if it's off limits by now)

i really do think you're going to be happy with the final product though

i tried bitchin sauce recently! also deflatormouse that means you have an income tho so that's pretty cool. ugh why i am such a silver lining person.

also just to say i gave the fella a good long kiss the other night because he had long been away and i can FULLY confirm that absence makes the heart grow much fonder (and the boner grow bonerer)

i would say i felt weak in the knees but literally i felt weak in my whole body! i did not know this was a thing, i think i just thought i could not meet someone quite so kindred, cut from the same cloth. it's truly a whole body phenomenon i've not been privy to. so better late than never i guess and superbly, overwhelmingly grateful.

on Sunday i go to my current best bud / ex boyfriend's wedding - woosh it will be interesting! watching the whole thing with his family will be awks but life is awks right?

Got home five hours ago from a quiet happy hour with my boy only to be joined by his boyfriend and his friends. We walked to a bar a couple blocks away for some dancing. I ended up making out quickly with the boyfriend, who for months had been jealous of me.

Good morning!

nailed it

I’m in a cab coming back from a fantastic week in Porto.

btw if you can figure out any way to swing a trip to Porto, DO IT

what did you like about it? we were all talking about travel destinations the other day and about how friends recommend portugal but were unsure about the specific reasons why. like compared to spain or italy?

i don't like traveling by plane but there are 2-3 places overseas i would like to experience eventually. japan, italy, basque area of france / spain.

oh england and scotland tbh. so i can meet some ilx pals :)

1. The old town is not believably picturesque. Portal is known for tile work and most of the buildings sport amazing designs.

2. The touristy stuff is actually good. We didn’t hit all the spots but we did see the contemporary art museum, which was hosting a retrospective of the life of Yoyai Kusama, and the national museum, which had a deep dive into the development of Portugal’s fine art scene. We also saw a fado performance that was absolutely stunning (3 guitarists, 2 vocalists), did a tour of Taylor’s port that was awesome, and did a day long boat ride down the Douro River that was gorgeous where they served us a real lunch cooked on the ship in a fully-appointed kitchen rather than microwaving a prepackaged meal.

3. Food is surprisingly cheap (compared to Boston). We splurged since this was a honeymoon trip and went to two Michelin-starred restaurants (dinner at Elemento, lunch at Casa de Chá da Boa Nova) and yes, they were very expensive, but especially Elemento would have been twice as much had it been in the US. Most of the normal restaurants averaged out at $30/person for appetizers, entree, cocktails, and an entire bottle of wine.

4. The street musicians are INSANELY GOOD. Like, 95% of them should be signed artists. My favorites were the three-piece band that was just unbelievably tight and this woman with a beautiful voice who would play the bridge to the songs she was covering on trombone.

We didn’t come close to seeing everything; we just would pick a direction at the start of the day and enjoy whatever we came across sight- and food-wise. We also were told about a monthly gay expat meetup where we met and hung out with some very friendly gentlemen who invited us to Thai food afterward (this did lead to an awkward “ooh sorry, we are not interested in a nightcap” moment but overall it was a fun night).

My one regret is that I’m now too old to party all night the way the city wants to; we took a car to the airport at 3:30 AM this morning and people were just leaving the nightclubs.

Oh fuck this phone. Remove “not” from bullet #1 and “Portal” is obv supposed to be “Porto”

very cool, thanks for the scene report.

No problem! At some point pictures will go up on Facebook so you can get a better sense of what we did

Thanks! I'm going to Lisbon and Porto next June.

jealz - i really am thinking Berlin is where i'll need to go as my first solo international trip, i just need somewhere where it's easy to go out and very "for dummies". it'll be cool cuz i can "work from hotel" during the day then just live the life.

"bitte," the only word you'll need to learn! ;)

wait that's so interesting that it means like 20 different things

lol

within the space of two hours yesterday we fucked like animals then met the parents of our third :D

reunited with my gf yesterday after not seeing her for 3.5 weeks. god i'm still delirious from it

Saw a play over the weekend, the life story of a disabled gay guy from the Canadian Prairies. It was very intense! He sang some beautiful songs.

Saw RHPS for the first time last night. I avoided it for a long time for, uh, personal reasons. Nowadays there's Discourse around it because Richard O'Brien is transphobic. They absolutely are transphobic, to be clear. And the show was amazing. Part of me wants to judge myself as hypocritical for being so enthusiastic about RHPS, given that I wouldn't touch Harry Potter with a 10 inch pole. At the same time, I don't actually think there's anything wrong with enjoying media by transphobic creators. If someone enjoys Harry Potter, some people will judge them for that and I don't.

That said I do disagree with them, I do with they would step back from Harry Potter, even though it's hard. And I don't feel that way about RHPS. To me there is a larger context. O'Brien themselves may be transphobic, but the effect of this show, over the past 49 years, has been _so_ positive for _so_ many queer people, including many, many trans people. Around here the people who put on RHPS shows have been consistently and prominently supportive of queer people, including trans people, for a very, very long time. To me, that counts a lot more than the old person who originally wrote the musical, like, 50 years ago being transphobic now. They haven't kept up. That's sad. The fandom has done more than kept up. They've been on the front lines of queer liberation for the whole time, and they're on the frontlines of queer liberation now.

The show itself... the cast was amazing. More than that, though, I felt it was like... there was succour in seeing it. At a time when there's so much hatred towards queer people, seeing this...

You know what it was that I loved about it? It was _intersectional_ (in terms of queer identities - the cast was pretty heavily white). Nobody made a big deal about who was trans, who wasn't. Nobody gave their pronouns. I don't have any idea about the gender identities of any of the cast. I know their names, I got a flyer listing their names, but gender? No idea. And sometimes that can be taken as erasing trans identities, but it was the opposite here. Where I live, in SE PDX, transness is so accepted as normal that being trans _just isn't a big deal_. The person playing Brad wore a binder. The person playing Frank-N-Furter didn't have their nipples covered and didn't have visible mastectomy scars. The entire rest of the cast had their nipples covered for the whole show. That's pretty much all I can tell you.

This worked really well for me because I don't really care about the gender of a particular person, in terms of... whether or not I'm attracted to them. If I'm dating somebody, you know, I wanna make sure I respect their gender, but at that show? All that mattered to me was that everyone there was hot. To me, that's kinda what RHPS represented for me. I think that's a positive message, and a lasting message.

that's very nice. i still haven't seen it! i should rectify that.

didn’t know that about o’brien, pity. the movie meant a lot to me as a teen who was starting to figure stuff out, but i haven’t seen it in ages and have never gone to a midnight showing of it. your post is making me want to revisit it Kate!

I thought “Red Hot Pilly Seppers” immediately and only got what you were talking about once you mentioned Frank-N-Furter

i had no idea what was going in until the Frankfurter mention

^^^ this is also my story

I clocked it at the Richard O’Brien mention

Tonight I had a brilliant new invention: onion ring poutine

would

trve patriot love

winter has arrived. our third spent two weeks with us and left today, back to the east coast. he's coming back for a week in early january. our time together was magnificent, but i've been very emotional the last few days before he left, with quite a bit of crying, and i'm tired. i need to get back into the gym, back into a tighter daily routine. winter survival mode, mental health maxing.

there are unknowns. 2 is going to want to open things eventually and 3 does not want that, at least not right now. but we're able to talk about it, which is better than it was.

my 2 can be distant and hard to read sometimes, very catlike and a little chaotic. it still frustrates me from time to time, which 3 picks up on. 3 struggles with anxiety, generally speaking and attached to relationships. 2 and 3 don't always mesh, but there is unreserved love and friendship between them, and a sexual spark. though 2 does not seem as hungry sexually for 3 as i am and 3 is working through that. while between myself and 3 there is wild physicality and romance. and 2 and i are still attracted to each other and we've become life partners. it can all feel a little tricky from time to time but mostly there is a free-flowing, energetic, and balanced dynamic among all of us that feels grand and unbelievably beautiful at its best.

not sure i know how to embed images from google drive, we'll see if this works. me, 3 and 2 on a rock.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DuTyo8d2iidNuNCiwGG2b99gILBBMgUN/view

https://i.ibb.co/q7gpNLt/Whats-App-Image-2024-10-28-at-14-25-39-f981bacd.jpg

yay! mountain men!

🏔️🐐🐐🐐

very nice to read :)

aww thanks jordan!

You guys look very happy, it’s really great to see

:) :) :)

<3

cutie patooties! hope i get to see y’all soon sometime. <3

I love this photo :)

garsh thanks for the love you guys! would hang with all of youse. dr and table i hope we get to convene in the great outdoors some time soon! and i hope everyone is taking time out to breathe this week. <3